General & Others Why is Zoro so popular?

yj

👑YNWA 👑
He’s the blueprint to achieve success and greatness. dedicate yourself to aim higher. Make yourself stand out from others. He doesn't let anything drag him down. He says something and does it. He’s a calm, collected badass character with one of the greatest goals ever. You just can’t hate him. one piece wouldn’t be what it is today without zoro. Odas setting him up for greatness. My main characters legacy will begin in wano.
 

Warchief Sanji D Goat

Ubel > Frieren and Fern
Because Zoro was the second most memorable character after Luffy and also was the first member to join Luffy's crew on his great adventure to become Pirate King. His dream is to become the world's greatest swordsman which is one of the harder dream to achieve, sheer luck and strength is not enough to get that title. Zoro's loyalty and strong will is some of his character traits highlights so far. He have a calm and more composed personality but he is also serious and logical if he wants to. He is strong and powerful as well. And he is also totally badass and cool for many fans in general.
 
Because Zoro was the second most memorable character after Luffy and also was the first member to join Luffy's crew on his great adventure to become Pirate King. His dream is to become the world's greatest swordsman which is one of the harder dream to achieve, sheer luck and strength is not enough to get that title. Zoro's loyalty and strong will is some of his character traits highlights so far. He have a calm and more composed personality but he is also serious and logical if he wants to. He is strong and powerful as well. And he is also totally badass and cool for many fans in general.
He is also confirmed Vice Captain by Oda in his vivre card.
 
Zoro is the voice of reason, he was there from the beginning and will be there until the end.
He will become the best swordsman and is the vice captain of the crew of the future king of pirates, the will of zoro is comparable to that of luffy, he never gives up and overcomes all the trials he faces.
He is the pillar of the crew, the one who will put luffy back on the right path, the one who will make the decisions when luffy is unable to do so.
He is so strong that other supernovas wonder why he is not captain. :myman:
 
It's no question that Zoro is one of the most popular characters from One piece. Examples of this popularity are:
1. he's been the second most popular character in shone jump polls since the start with the exception of the Dressrosa poll where he was third following Law.

2. Artur from library of Ohara translated the popularity data from One piece magazine 8 and in it Zoro was the first place for two out of six demographics and second place in every other demographic besides 9 year olds who like had Chopper in first place even above Luffy.

3. Some notable individuals have said Zoro is their favorite character such One of Oda's editors and youtubers such as Nux Taku, Grandline Review and Super Eye patch Wolf among others.

4. Popularity polls from western youtubers such as Rogersbase and Tekking also end up having Zoro in first place

5. Even popularity polls held on this very forum and on the deceased Orojackson consistently had Zoro in first or second place.

And so on.

With that I ask why Zoro is so popular?

EDIT:
Recently Artur has made a poll of his own with up to 5000 votes and once again the results speak for themselves
7th in male Katakuri..... and ranked #9 overall..... one among them Robin a female then who is the 2nd Female, Sanji ? hahaha :suresure:
 
Maybe Because he Is The Ordinary Who Became Extraordinary Through Effort , And That Relates With Everyone Gives Hope/inspires, The Way His Theme Is Surrounded Around a Shark To never Stop Swimming/Struggling To be better ..............
And Yeah He Is A Badass And Has Got The most befitting Voice Actor Imo .
So there You Go This Is What Makes Zoro Popular In This Community
 

Adam 🍎

Pretty Boy
I'll make a line here which might seem odd a bit.
I honestly see a lot of resemblance between Zoro/Bakugou.

Both have immeasurable desire and drive to best them self and everyone they meet. Zoro and Bakugou will never shine away from a challenge. Zoro will always challenge a swordsman to a fight to prove his dominance while Bakugou will always challenge anyone who might think low of him. They always aim to best themself. They are a bit of dicks sometimes but their arrogance and pride is result of their results rather than empty bravado which makes it likeable instead of disgusting.

To keep it short makes them stand out so much is that they are 2 individuals with strong personalities and big winner mentality. And that draws people in. Each fight Zoro is in and he wins it is deserved win, same as Bakugou. If needed those 2 will go until they bodies will break.

That just makes them likeable a lot and draws people to them.
 
Two things also help Zoro as opposed to shonen characters in a similar spot:

1. He's underused. Most of the time you basically have a guy who tries to steal the show, but the controversy right now is that we don't have enough Zoro. Being in demand is a good thing.

2. He's not a rival. In fact, he's arguably the best friend to Luffy despite their differences. Their chemistry is very charming and brotherly, and they are completely confident in one another. He's not just "the cool guy."
 
Because he represents what most of the reader wish to be and because he seems a character completely devoid of any tipe of weakness: what i mean is that pretty much anyone has some inner weakness and some insecurities. Even the large majority of fictional characters.
Zoro, apparently, not. Always badass, always confident: he never hesitates, he never fails.
One can claim that he was beaten by Kuina, or that he struggle to fight women, but has this ever been a concrete obstacle in his way? Has this ever been showed as something that could limit him or like a real personal flaw that he needed to overcome?
Zoro he’s written like the archetype of the perfect warrior: always beneath any type of human-like weakness or personal flaw, like a the personalisation of a Superman.
If this works amazingly to create iconic jaw-dropping and awe inspiring scenes it makes the character barely relatable and sympathetic from a simply human point of view.
He’s the perfect ideal-self of an adolescent: the character that represent perfectly the wish to be free from every flaw, weakness and lack of confidence (which Oda himself confirmed to be the ideal target of One Piece); whose will can’t be overcome or extinguished and the author knows it and play constantly with it.
The problem of current Zoro is that in the past Oda always could mix this “ideal Zoro” with a more “Human-like Zoro” ( which has always been somewhat feeble) while today the “first” completely overwhelmed the “second”, so the archetypical side of Zoro, which has always been obvious, was always reserved as a climax of wisely balanced narrative mix which included interactions with his crewmembers, gags, slice of life moments ecc.
Today, dued to less screentime and Oda wanting to appeal too much a demographic portion of the fandom much less involved than before to his comic, the badass, cool, collected, arrogant, serious, and practically perfect Zoro has become his main and only trait; which, in my opinion, flattened tremendously his character.
 
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Because he represents what most of the reader wish to be and because he seems a character completely devoid of any tipe of weakness: what i mean is that pretty much anyone has some inner weakness and some insecurities. Even the large majority of fictional characters.
Zoro, apparently, not. Always badass, always confident: he never hesitates, he never fails.
One can claim that he was beaten by Kuina, or that he struggle to fight women, but has this ever been a concrete obstacle in his way? Has this ever been showed as something that could limit him or like a real personal flaw that he needed to overcome?
Zoro he’s written like the archetype of the perfect warrior: always beneath any type of human-like weakness or personal flaw, like a the personalisation of a Superman.
If this works amazingly to create iconic jaw-dropping and awe inspiring scenes it makes the character barely relatable and sympathetic from a simply human point of view.
He’s the perfect ideal-self of an adolescent: the character that represent perfectly the wish to be free from every flaw, weakness and insecurity (which Oda himself confirmed to be the ideal target of One Piece); whose will can’t be overcome or extinguishe and the author knows it and play constantly with it.
The problem of current Zoro is that in the past Oda always could mix this “ideal Zoro” with a more “Human-like Zoro” ( which has always been somewhat feeble) while today the “first” completely overwhelmed the “second”, so the archetypical side of Zoro, which has always been obvious, was always reserved as a climax of wisely balanced narrative mix which included interactions with his crewmembers, gags, slice of life moments ecc. while today, dued to less screentime and Oda wanting to appeal too much a demographic portion of the fandom much less involved than before to his comic, the badass, cool, collected, arrogant, serious, and practically perfect Zoro has become his main and only trait. Which, in my opinion, flattened tremendously his character.

^THIS is a near perfect explanation, couldnt have said it any better myself
 
The problem of current Zoro is that in the past Oda always could mix this “ideal Zoro” with a more “Human-like Zoro” ( which has always been somewhat feeble) while today the “first” completely overwhelmed the “second”, so the archetypical side of Zoro, which has always been obvious, was always reserved as a climax of wisely balanced narrative mix which included interactions with his crewmembers, gags, slice of life moments ecc.
Today, dued to less screentime and Oda wanting to appeal too much a demographic portion of the fandom much less involved than before to his comic, the badass, cool, collected, arrogant, serious, and practically perfect Zoro has become his main and only trait; which, in my opinion, flattened tremendously his character.
He's still really human though, and we're hopefully coming to the part where he overcomes that as far as being an obstacle in battle goes. He is just as reckless as Luffy and it makes him cool, but contradicts his path of discipline. He immediately goes to fight someone like a Noble or Orochi in vain, without considering the consequences. He was down on himself for being careless in Punk Hazard, but then had Shusui stolen from him twice. He fought like crap in Ringo and almost got killed for his distraction. Even though he was the rock of the crew in Water Seven, Kaku acknowledged that he fought without spirit. He seemed cool but he was just as off as Luffy.

I do think it can be hard to see the Zoro in him who ate that cruddy riceball, but he's not so prideful that he won't let Luffy jump on his face or anything. He's always "cool guy" confident and now mentally more rigid, but I don't think he'll come off as arrogant now that it's the main event.

Being fearless (he'd rather die than admit defeat) showing he'll never throw away his ambitions and loyal as well, he is the only one of the remaining 5 who joined Usopp, Nami, Sanji, who never left the crew. Those are my favorite parts about zoro
I love that it was literally right from Luffy untying him and is still there. He came back from the timeskip shorter on words, but he is still dedicated to these goofballs without fail. Even Sanji, sometimes they're literally the same dude. I loved when Luffy made fun of him for caring about Sanji on Zou.
 

Bogard

You can't win
Pretimeskip Zoro was a very good character. Not only he had very good interactions with Strawhats, but also arc-characters, but he had a sense of pride, a bushido, with strive to become stronger, funny gags, and badass appearances/speeches, evolving from someone who wanted to kill his captain if he ended on the way of his goal to support him as a vice captain and being ready to sacrifice himself for him to survive

Can't say the same for his postskip version though, who is most of the time barely seen interacting with others to the point of sometimes appearing emotionless, with the drastical reduce of his screentime not helping either. In Wano, i liked his interactions with Yasu, Hiyori and Ebisu overall, especially his reaction after Yasu got killed.

It's part of what make Zoro an enjoyable character to watch, but nowadays those moments are so rare. However to be fair, he isn't the only one suffering from this. I'd say most of the SHs regressed after the timeskip, with Oda focusing more on Luffy and arc allies nowadays
 
Im no zoro fanboy, but he's certainly one of the more likeable straw hats and One Piece characters to me.

One reason I think why I like zoro and why I think a lot of other people like zoro is that he is a "show don't tell character", which is not very common in Shonen anime.

Zoro himself rarely brags, and is often times always putting his life one the line for his friends and their responsibilities and seek zero thanks, attention or favours in return, he does occasionally have scuffles with Nami because he finds her greedy, or occasionally Sanji who have bickered ever since they have first met, but those are really the only exceptions. All other instances are mostly comical skits like his interaction with Law on Zou.

Zoro's character actually reminds me a lot of Ben Beckman, and now that I think about a little bit of Katakuri. He's not the type of person who likes to stick his head into any mess like luffy, unless its by accident or absolutely necessary, but will nonetheless always stand true to his morals and never give in an inch, no matter what people tell him.

Wether it was disagreeing with Luffy and the others on Ussops return to the crew, or Zoro and Luffy's fight in Mock town because Luffy wrongfully accused Zoro of murder, Zoro is never afraid to stick to morals and let his opinions be heard, even if may offend others.

Zoro is kind, but he's not apologetic either. He saved Vivi's life from Mr 5 and her partner, but only after intense pressure. Only after learning Vivi was actually a princess, after Miss Monday's defeat, after begging from Ingaram, and blackmailing from Nami was Zoro finally compelled to give a hand and help.

Zoro is willing to die for his dream, but won't be afraid to abandon it if it means saving his friends' lives. But I guess that's a quality that all the straw hats share.

In my opinion: a well written shounen character doesn't have to display all 365 emotions and faces under the sun. Those kind of anime tropes are overdone. Characters like Naruto, Eren all show lots of emotion and feelings, but they soon end up solely relying on those two things for like the rest of their stories. Even worse is when they end up displaying and acting the ways they condemned in the first place. Then it just becomes hypocrisy, which no one likes.

Characters like Levi, Alucard, Lawliet, Trafalgar Law or Kenpachi are all mostly pretty consistent throughout their stories(well Kenpachi might sometimes be a bit crazy, been a long time since I read Bleach, Alucard is a vampire so his actions are self explanatory). They are badass when they need to be, normal when they aren't fighting or in an important story juncture, not attention seekers, but become absolute beasts when they fighting and in important story junctures. These characters know how to control their hype. The vibe and appearance they give off is not the cocky, go lucky, know it all, but the experienced, well informed, seasoned professional. Characters like these don't often lose as quickly or get one shotted as fast as Luffy vs Kaido because they can see when they are outmatched and are smart enough to avoid it, unless the situation is desperate and unavoidable, like Zoro vs Fujitora or Levi vs Beast Titan for example. And when they do go all out and give it their all, they make sure to not leave readers feel dissapointed and give a hell of a show.

Well that's my analysis of why Zoro is so popular anyway.
 
Because Zoro is perfect!
You don't need to be dumb and be pervert to be a good character and have a "personnality"!! In real life, people love when someone is mysterious and serious with a little sense of humor! Zoro is not only my favorite character of OP but also of all time!
He is arrogant yes, and sometimes idiot but he is a hardworker, loyal, a true friend! Someone who you need to follow in real life! Never ever he disappointed me, that's what i want from a character.
His wano adventure was great with yasu! And with zoro you know you will have great fight. Clean and simple!

Luffy is unique and Zoro is unique, both of them complete each other! That's why we love them and OP!
Sometimes strong but arrogant characters can be appealing yes, while i can't think of any at the top of my head right now, there are manga and stories out there with these type of characters (kenpachi from bleach maybe?). In these instances it is appealing because we see a character is allowed to brag because he actually has the strength to back it up. It becomes a pleasant surprise.

Edit: Yusei Fudo from Yu Gi Oh 5ds is also another example, i just realized.
 
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